WHAT IS IT FOR ME?
One important thing I realized is the call to be “mindful.” We often see this posts in restaurants, “Be MINDFUL of your belongings.” Others may have asked us, “Do you MIND?” What is mindfulness actually? I heard noted Psychologist, Dr. Honey Carandang said that “Mindfulness is tuning in to what one is doing and ‘why’ one is actually doing it.”
I consider mindfulness as experiencing the present moment and enjoying the moment in the present! It is a way for us to live life fully, simplify, let go of the unimportant and be more aware of ‘our essentials’ in life. And this we do with judging ourselves, our thoughts and feelings. It is actually letting ourselves ‘BE.”
Understanding about mindfulness and actually living it entails a total change of perspective and patterns. From my burnout season, the challenge for me is to look closely at how I am taking care my self – mind, body and spirit! I may be doing self-care activities for the ‘sake of’ but not actually being mindful of it. Admittedly, I find myself trying to tune in to what I am into, as my mind tend to fleet elsewhere, while my spirit is also clamoring for something. I try to remind myself that I need to be more “in the moment.” To look up from my laptop. To really listen to what my kids are telling me. To thoughtfully give a hug or a kiss to my love ones. And be in the moment and in my loved-ones presence as well. The organized-planner-eldest side of me tends to tick off my mental list. Doing so just make me so emotionally cranky and mentally cluttered. Anything may push a button for me to snap or be in tears like questions or whim of my kids, my husband’s simple request, and even thinking about what meals to prepare. And so I need to shift gears. Admit it moms, we get tired too. We are mortals. As much as our kids have the image of us being supermoms, clad with cape and magic powers, there are days we just want to BE. BE means just letting our SELF be who one is.
WHAT ARE THE MEANINGS I GAINED FROM IT?
The call to being mindful is the call for moms (even dads and any individual) to attain their sense of purpose and well-being. I had a lot of “musts” and “should” to myself as a young mom. But eventually, when life’s challenges becomes too much, there is such thing as “pause” “breathe” and “Be.” These are the shifting to lower gears. No guilt, no judgement, just letting it be. On that season of feeling maxed out, I was crying almost daily for different reasons.
I knew that I need to do something for myself – for ME, Myself and I. While my family loves me so and my husband is supportive of me, I am the only one who can really do something about it. I need to look at what I am going through objectively in order to put matters in appropriate perspectives. One thing I did was a mind map of my issues, and I did a lot of thinking and mindful musing about the words and experiences that holds importance each day. All these, I prayed about and wrote down.
My handwriting became my actual physical extension. And those visual representations of myself in paper spoke through me many times and helped straighten my woes and bounced back as if assuring me again.
Things happen for a reason. There are matters that happen by chance and we cannot do anything but change our perspective. There are things that happen by choice and so we need to do something about it. And with all that are happening in our lives, as parents, as a wife or partner, as a career woman or homemaker, the more we are called to be mindful.
Incidentally, these past few moths, Mommy Mundo founder, Janice Villanueva, and I have putting our heads together about the Mom Manifesto. LIke us, who are both busy moms, we long to encourage moms still lead a more connected, mindful and purposeful life.
How can the Mom Manifesto be a tool to mindfulness?
When we do not know what really is best… When we’re so full of things to attend to and we can no longer breathe… When what we hope for do not turn out the way we hoped… When we feel down and uninspired, then we are called to sit down and muse mindfully. Having a written Manifesto becomes our “call” to be tune in and align our present with our future. It is a ‘pause’ & a point of reflection in order to help us be mindful of what and why we are actually doing what we are doing each day.
Our ‘manifesto” is our “what-am-I-really-here-for” or “what-am-I-actually-doing” response. This will enable us to connect who we really are – our thoughts, emotions and actions in order to lead a meaningful life & make our relationships not just good, but better! Being mindful, musing and writing will not cost us much (than a worksheet and 15 minutes a day), but we have more to gain from it. It will be a good exercise to write down about our selves again.
And so let us take what we want as a mom further. We can choose life to pass by us or we can choose to make the most out of what life offers us. There is meaning we can find each in day, in each experience, in each tear and in each smile. All we need to do is pause, reflect and ask “what it may be for you?”
As you do your own Mom Manifesto, I wish you find meaning in your mindful musing!
Michele A.
Michele